An historical novel about the man still considered professional baseball's fiercest competitor is the new work of an English department faculty member at Mississippi State University.
"Tyrus" is associate professor Patrick J. Creevy's fictional account of a young Tyrus R. "Ty" Cobb, who went on to earn a record-making name for himself as both "The Georgia Peach" and "The Meanest Man in Baseball." The 396-page psychological portrait is published by Forge Hardcover of New York.
Born in 1886 in The Narrows, Ga., Cobb began his major league career in 1905 as a center fielder with the Detroit Tigers. After more than two decades, he remained in the American League but left the Tigers to join the then-Philadelphia Athletics.
During an almost quarter-century in what was a very rough-and-tumble sport, he established numerous records, including highest major league lifetime batting average (.367), most games played (3,033), most hits (4,191), and most runs scored (2,244). Cobb, who died in 1961, was among the first five players elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Creevy's deeply researched study deals with a teen-age Cobb's struggle to escape the domination of his politically prominent father and make a career in what many considered "a trivial game." Sadly, the Cobbs' reconciliation came just as scandal was about to overtake the family: amid rumors of an affair, his mother killed her husband of more than 20 years.
Cobb--18 years old at the time--was filled with both grief and rage as he left his northeast Peach State roots to try out with the Tigers, some 700 very long miles away.
Creevy, a member of the MSU faculty since 1976, holds a bachelor's degree from Holy Cross College and a doctorate from Harvard University. He earlier authored another work of fiction, "Lake Shore Drive" (1992), which is set in his hometown of Chicago.
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